Deeplinks Blog posts about Transparency

Virginia may be home to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the FBI National Academy, but it could also soon be home to some of the toughest regulations on local law enforcement use of surveillance technologies.

When a customer signs up for Internet access from a broadband provider such as Comcast or Verizon, they're signing up for more than just access to that ISP's network. After all, ISPs provide the "last mile" connection to their customers, but these ISPs do not own the entire infrastructure of the Internet. To reach the rest of the Internet, traffic needs to leave the physical network owned by the ISP and travel over other networks owned by other parties. Sometimes these other parties are other ISPs, and sometimes they are content providers such as Netflix or "content delivery networks" such as Akamai that serve content from a variety of clients. Either way, it is these interconnections, where two networks exchange traffic with each other, that make the Internet what it is: an interconnected network of networks. How well these interconnections function (and whether or not they're subject to persistent congestion) has a huge impact on the quality of people's Internet connections.

Much of EFF’s transparency work centers around government activities in the executive and legislative branches. But transparency in the courts is also important. That’s why yesterday we sent a letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit asking for greater free public access to orders issued by the court.

For transparency activists, receiving overly redacted documents is a guilty pleasure. Sure, we'd all prefer to have the records unmarred by secrecy (except for narrow occasions, such as when the black-outs legitimately protect people's privacy), but sometimes those redactions are the first indication that we've hit pay dirt. Other times, these redactions provide comic relief.

In anticipation of Sunshine Week, EFF called for the public to submit the most absurd redactions they've seen for for The Foilies, our new “awards” for shenanigans in the Freedom of Information process. The big takeaway from the nominations we received: redactions can be unintentional conceptual art.